The Dominican Republic, almost squeezed out of the U.S. sugar market by ever-tighter quota limits, has signed a three-year contract to sell sugar directly to the Soviet Union for the first time. The agreement comes as the Reagan Administration is preparing to ask Congress to overhaul the sugar quota system on grounds it is hurting U.S. consumers, damaging allies--including the Dominican Republic and the Philippines--and crippling U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean.

Juan Bosch, a former president of the Dominican Republic whose name is forever linked to the U.S. invasion of that island nation in 1965, died Thursday in Santo Domingo after a long hospitalization. He was 92. A self-educated author of about 40 books and founder of two of the nation's three political parties, Bosch exerted an influence as a reformer on a generation of Caribbean politicians that extended far beyond his short time as president.

Jammed into an open boat with other desperate Dominicans, Ramon Diaz Perez battled through a tropical storm to get to Puerto Rico, part of a new wave of boat people who are risking their lives to have better ones. "It was a storm of water, where the sea was wild and proud and the waves were way above us," Diaz Perez said in a dingy holding cell for aliens on San Juan's waterfront. "Right then it was really tough.

Meet the candidates: The stage lights pop on, and Johnny Ventura strides through a 10-foot portrait of himself, then rips into one of the songs that made him a merengue legend worldwide. Ventura is launching his autobiography, "A Little of Me," in a hotel ballroom here. He's also campaigning as an opposition party's candidate for deputy mayor of the Dominican capital.

Investigators into the plane crash that killed 189 people last week located the plane's "black box" recorders on the sea floor. Encouraged by the discovery, searchers began mapping the rugged ocean floor 12 miles off the north coast of Dominican Republic where the Boeing 757 went down Feb. 6, carrying mostly German tourists returning from Caribbean holidays. All aboard died.

Tropical Storm Jeanne plowed into the Dominican Republic on Thursday, killing a baby in a landslide and forcing thousands of people to flee their homes, emergency officials said. Powerful waves pounded the north coast, along with high winds and driving rain. Trees were toppled, and phone services and electricity were knocked out in some areas.

The election of Leonel Fernandez, a lawyer raised in New York City, as president of the Dominican Republic marks a dramatic generational change in the nation's politics and signals the beginning of a new era for the impoverished country. Fernandez, 42, a political moderate, succeeds Joaquin Balaguer, 89, the strongman who has dominated politics there for four decades, along with his alter ego and fellow octogenarian, Juan Bosch.

March 26, 1988 | NORMAN KEMPSTER and JAMES GERSTENZANG, Times Staff Writers

President Reagan said Friday that the United States is "considering everything" possible to force Manuel A. Noriega to relinquish power in Panama, but he turned aside an offer by the Dominican Republic to give the beleaguered general a home in exile there. "No, that's not far enough," Reagan said when asked if Washington endorses the asylum offer extended by Dominican President Joaquin Balaguer. Balaguer, completing an official visit to the White House, was at Reagan's side.

The story has been told before, and it will probably be told again. It goes something like this: Boy grows up in the Dominican Republic with dreams of playing professional baseball. He spends countless hours on the sandlots, sometimes playing in bare feet, sometimes with a cardboard glove, in pursuit of his goal. He idolizes those who have gone before him--players such as Juan Marichal and Manny Mota--and realizes that baseball is a way out of this poverty-stricken country.